‘Things happened that you can never put behind you’ - Shark Hanlon hoping for National redemption after the year from hell

As the nursery rhyme reminds us, 'For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost, and for the want of a shoe the horse was lost'. And on it goes, escalating rapidly until an unfortunate sequence of catastrophes eventually brings the whole kingdom crashing down.

The meaning behind the verse isn’t too difficult to work out: make sure you pay close attention to the finer detail because the small things in life matter and careless oversight can result in dreadful consequences.

Nobody in horseracing is presently more aware of this ancient truism than John ‘Shark’ Hanlon, who was once brilliantly described in the Racing Post by Patrick Mullins as “a great red chunk of raw Irish”.